


tomorrow’s morning light

by phosphynes



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:05:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phosphynes/pseuds/phosphynes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A longitudinal study on the correlation between IQ and self-sabotage, by Dr. Spencer Reid, Ph.D. (The editors are most grateful to Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner for his help in the preparation of this issue).</p>
            </blockquote>





	tomorrow’s morning light

**Author's Note:**

> somewhat liberal interpretation of canon timeline; please forgive any mistakes. title comes from lily kershaw's _maybe_.

The beginning, Spencer thinks, could be when he first steps through the doors of the BAU, only 22 but having gone through too much to still be impressionable, when Derek Morgan holds out a hand that Spencer shakes because he doesn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Or it could be when Jennifer Jareau waves them all into the briefing room and introduces herself and the case in that same, unflappable breath. 

Or, if he really thinks about it, it could be in the brief moment of lucidity in that cabin by the cemetery, when he hasn’t yet realized the deeper implications of the words _I choose Aaron Hotchner_ but says them anyway, and places his life, and all that comes with it, into the hands of someone without an eidetic memory, and someone who doesn’t have any reason to remember their conversations with the same sort of detail.

Beside him, Hotch drives with a seemingly single-minded intensity. They pass stretches of cornfields, of blue skies; Spencer rolls down the window, and inhales. 

 

_i._

Years ago, Spencer wakes up in the hospital, its walls white and clinical, the sharp scent of disinfectant permeating through every corner of his room. It’s somehow much warmer here than in that cabin perfumed by burning fish guts. 

Fear, his mind supplies. Anxiety, stress. The most obvious answer is death, with its even momentary ice-cold grip choking Spencer in ways he’d never experienced.

It isn’t until years later that Spencer realizes that fear is the right answer but not in the way he thinks. As it turns out, Spencer knows quite a bit about everything but not everything about it all, and the cold is the utter terror at falling in love with Aaron Hotchner.

Hotch leans down, careful of the IV drip and Spencer’s widening eyes, and presses his lips to Spencer’s own. Spencer’s surprised at how cool they are against his skin. Also later, Spencer thinks, _oh, you were falling in love with me too_.

 _I knew you’d understand_ , Spencer had said, even as the fear settled into a permanent home in the pit of his stomach. Hotch had understood. Spencer isn’t sure _he_ does.

 

Hotch ignores Reid's confused eyes; they’re slightly out of focus, somewhat dim, and Hotch doesn’t like seeing anyone that way, much less Reid. 

There was a time, which isn’t even that long ago, when Hotch thought Reid odd, thought he simultaneously spoke too much while not really saying anything at all, thought the sharp angles of his frame a fitting metaphor for the way Reid seemed ill-suited for everything, how he was always somewhat out of place and trying to fit flailing gangly limbs inside a too small box.

There was a time when Hotch looked at Reid and saw only Gideon's protégé, destined to be emotionally limited, brilliant, and not at all beautiful. Hotch doesn’t want to think about when that changed, because he knows he won't like the answer. 

*

It’s a testament, Spencer decides, to his profiling skills that he passes the FBI’s psychological evaluation so easily. It’s also somewhat worrying that no one thinks twice about his quick return.

Spencer doesn’t understand how to process it. He doesn’t want to be coddled, and hasn’t ever been so he wouldn’t know how to respond to it anyway. But he’s also never asked for help, and he doesn’t know where to start. 

None of it matters. Depravity doesn't have a schedule, and Hotch never brings up the kiss. It’s not as if Spencer has ample experience in this area, much less experience with married superiors who may or may not be mirroring their spouse’s possible infidelity. Spencer, like Hotch, has always been good at compartmentalizing.

 

When Hotch is 20, Haley drags him through her front door and into her kitchen, where he is accosted by her mother, her father, her sister, who, to her credit, tries very hard to pretend to not be a part of the accosting, but fails to realize her magazine is upside down. 

The conversation is direct. Haley’s father wants to know his intentions, wants to know that his daughter will be taken care of. The way he speaks suggests he at least drafted The Guidebook of Intimidating Behavior, but Hotch is ready for this, if nothing else. 

Haley and her mother have mapped out his life for him, carved out rivers, valleys, gorges, to fit the unexpected – emergencies, lack of money, issues of national security – but it all ends in the same place. A house with a white picket fence, a golden retriever, kids, maybe two or three. Haley hasn’t decided, and it isn’t as if Hotch is going to ask, isn’t as if he sees anything now but the stars in her eyes and the way her laughter captures a room.

They have a child now, and the second or third will never happen. Hotch wants to tell himself that what he feels is fatherly instinct in excess, but Reid’s hair obscures his eyes more than ever these days, and he’s never looked less certain about his place in the BAU. 

“Reid,” he says quietly, long after everyone else has left and half the lights in the bullpen have shut off. Reid sits at his desk with his legs curled beneath him, fingers curled around a cold cup of coffee, hair curled against his cheekbones. “Go home.”

Reid glances up at him, the flush of surprise the only bit of color on his face Hotch’s seen in a long while. “I – it’s very quiet there. I don’t – “ he shrugs, and starts to scratch at his inner arm.

Hotch grabs Reid’s hand before he can stop himself.

“Hotch?”

Hotch drops Reid’s hand just as quickly, and the sound it makes when it smacks against Reid’s leg is piercing in the silent bullpen. “Go home and get some sleep. We have an early morning tomorrow.” 

“Hotch,” Reid repeats, but differently. 

Hotch doesn’t know what he’s doing. “No.” 

 

Hotch doesn’t think about it again until a few months later, when Reid shows up at his office door with a letter that’s been folded and refolded, and a badge and gun he has no idea what to do with. 

“I, ah,” Reid says, fiddling with his fingers. “I’d like the next week off, if possible. There are a few things I need to take care of.”

There’s a determination in Reid’s eyes that tells Hotch this isn’t really about Gideon. “Of course,” Hotch says. “I’m sure Gideon would have wanted that.”

The momentary flash of terror that crosses Reid’s face is replaced by careful contemplation. “He never mentioned it. Directly. Even in his letter.”

Hotch nods.

“You, ah, you’ve never mentioned it directly either.” 

Hotch nods again. He’s not sure why, if he were honest with himself. Reid is a remarkable profiler, but he’s not indispensable. Reid’s method of choice in dealing with his own demons seems to be to not do so at all, and as his boss – 

“Right,” Reid says after the silence. “I - _thank you_.”

That catches Hotch off guard. What does it say about him, he wonders, that _that_ floods him with more guilt than anything Haley’s said in the past year. 

 

 _ii._

There’s a moment in that interrogation room, when Hardwick stares at Reid with murderous fascination instead of murderous intent, that Hotch realizes this feeling is never going to go away.

Reid is brave, almost stupidly so. Hotch is a single father whose marriage was failing long before the divorce papers. But he’s always been a bit selfish, has always wanted what he knew he couldn’t have. 

But this – this is different. Hotch is a very good profiler. Reid, not surprisingly, is a terrible actor. Hotch knows what he should want, and none of this is it. 

 

Spencer can’t entirely place the look in Hotch's eyes, but it seems all too familiar. It’s something that’s stared out at him all his life, from his father passing through the doorway to his mother clinging on, from the unsubs Spencer wants to save to the victims he knows he can’t. 

"Reid," Hotch says, adjusts his hands on the wheel into an eight four position and shifts back to a nine three. He clears his throat, almost as if something is stuck. "Reid. Spencer."

Spencer jolts slightly in surprise, and then he remembers. Desperation. It’s odd, how one emotion can be colored so many ways. "Oh," Spencer says. "I didn't expect this."

Hotch chokes out a laugh devoid of any humor. "Believe me, neither did I."

The car fills with a not uncomfortable silence. Spencer has never been anyone's anything, much less someone's rebound. He isn’t the sort of person people run to when they hurt, and he can’t imagine being someone's catharsis. Spencer taps out an uncertain rhythm against his thigh. 

"Spencer," Hotch repeats. "Reid."

And yet, "yes," Spencer nods. Yet, "yes. I would like that, I think."

 

The motel is deceptively clean on the outside. Inside, the wallpaper seems to crawl away from the walls in long tendrils, and it’s against one of these that Spencer lets Hotch lick his way into his mouth, lets him tug the ends of his shirt from his pants and undo his buttons with shaky hands. All of this would be still be familiar to Hotch; Spencer, for all his attempts to resemble an ill-dressed pipe cleaner, is not hard planes and lines, but a concave sort of softness. 

"Reid," Hotch mouths against his neck, sending pleasant sparks across sensitive skin. Spencer thinks about correcting him, thinks about the dizzying pleasure from hearing _Spencer_ fall from those lips, but his mental processes halt to a stop as Hotch rocks into him, presses him harder against the wall like he wants to hold Spencer there forever. 

"Yes," Spencer breathes back. 

It’s new, but somehow familiar; Hotch kisses him like he knows everything, not just where to push to make Spencer melt, but the way Spencer prefers to fold his clothes, the way Spencer chooses to sleep under the covers even in the worst sort of heat. 

Spencer usually hates feeling vulnerable, but he neither hates this nor is able to come up with a different feeling for it. He kisses Hotch back, like he wants to know everything. 

 

_iii._

And time moves on. Nothing really changes; sometimes Spencer goes home after work and hears a knock on his door a few hours later; on Tuesdays it’s the old lady in his apartment building who bakes cookies on an almost militarily strict schedule, on other days it’s Hotch. Sometimes Hotch brings takeout, a book, an article from a journal that he thinks Spencer would find interesting. Sometimes Spencer tells him he's already read it, sometimes Spencer doesn’t tell him even if he has. 

Sometimes, Hotch pushes Spencer into his messy bed and strips him almost reverently. 

These days are the ones Spencer likes best. It’s not because of the sex, though Spencer enjoys that too; Hotch is careful and patient, acts as if he thinks Spencer’s going to break. Spencer won’t, but there’s something about being looked at that way, like Spencer’s worth protecting even during the good. 

Hotch is unguarded after sex, his shield stripped away alongside his clothes. He runs his hands through Spencer's hair and tells him bits and pieces of his life that don’t really amount to anything, but Spencer imagines this is what a real relationship feels like. 

Hotch eventually falls asleep, chest pressed against Spencer's back and arm draped loosely around his waist. The body heat between them is almost scorching; Spencer stares at the little red numbers on his alarm clock and wonders when his luck will run out. 

 

There are things you learn about Reid only if you spend enough time with him, peel back enough layers of the genius with the perpetually terrible haircut and a fascination with mismatched socks.

There’s the obvious; Reid's apartment is a mecca for books, stacks and stacks piled to the ceilings just waiting to be a fire hazard. There are probably more empty cans of coffee grounds lying around in his cupboards than there are in the dumpster behind Starbucks. The only computer in the apartment sits, somewhat dusty, in the far corner with books he’s banished for being “an affront to society”. 

Then there’s everything else. Reid has what can only be described as a shrine to the Hershey’s Corporation, except it’s just bags and bags of Hershey’s miniatures with Halloween images on the wrappers. His guest room looks like it’s never been touched, and is wallpapered in cartoon-esque drawings of prominent figures from the Byzantine Empire. 

On the very first night, Hotch falls asleep under the cross-eyed gaze of Theodosius I, and never does so again. Reid laughs, and refuses to tell him what’s funny. 

*

Despite Spencer's memory, there are large portions of his life that are muddled at best. Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 11, Spencer knows he learned that the Eisenhower interstate system requires one mile in every five to be straight, that opiorphin, a painkiller six times more powerful than morphine, is found in saliva, and that despite law enforcement's dependency on eyewitness testimony, no one really pays enough attention to their surroundings to even notice that a child is the only person to ever enter and exit a house.

Being suddenly forced to stand on his own is unsurprisingly jarring, but the lack of outside conflict is both relieving for Spencer but worrying for the state of human observation.

"It wasn't that I wanted anyone to call CPS and have me taken away," Spencer explains, twisting his fingers over and over until Hotch reaches over and takes one hand into his own. "But we lived there for eight years after, and no one ever questioned that I was the only one who ever brought in groceries or made any sort of appearance."

There’s an indescribable look of sadness on Hotch's face that Spencer can’t decide how he feels about. "Your skills of observation are far superior, I know."

Hotch makes a distressed noise from the back of his throat, but he doesn’t say anything out loud. After a while, "you're a good person."

"Oh," Spencer says, caught off guard. "That’s - that's very subjective." Spencer can think of a laundry list of people who would disagree, but Hotch is there, and smiling, and Spencer doesn’t want to think about that now.

 

On Saturday, Garcia calls Spencer out to brunch at a small diner on the edge of Georgetown, where she delicately, carefully, in a very circular fashion completely unlike herself, asks Spencer what he’s doing. 

"Most individuals on the rebound are often incapable of making genuine emotional connections with their new partners,” Spencer says, interrupting Garcia’s suspiciously well-organized speech that is currently outlining why Hotch, a wonderful person and a wonderful boss, is so utterly wrong for Spencer, a wonderful person and a wonderful friend. It’s kind of funny to think of JJ and Garcia and Morgan and Prentiss and maybe even Rossi, if he’s feeling generous and not suffocating under the collective weight of their stupidity, sitting around a table and discussing Spencer and Hotch as if they’re a pair of unsubs. Only not exactly funny. It’s mostly sort of sad. 

Garcia isn’t used to delivering the profile, even if she’s used to hearing it. _Wonderful_ probably hadn’t been in the original script so many times. 

"No, but - " Garcia frowns, which doesn’t suit her at all. "That's my point."

“Statistically, four out of five rebound relationships fail.”

"I was going to tell you that. Sweetheart, you're making my argument for me."

"For people who have a hard time moving on," Spencer stirs his mostly cold coffee, until a miniature twister swirls in its depths. His spoon clanks loudly against the cup. “Rebounds are about distraction and companionship. Or sex.”

"Boy Wonder, I don't - oh. _Oh_ ," Garcia scoots closer, and grabs Spencer's hand. "Oh honey."

 

Garcia seems to pass along the memo, because the careful looks from Prentiss and JJ slow to a crawl, though Morgan looks more and more like he wants to punch something everyday. In any other case, Spencer would've been glad for a distraction, but Foyet isn’t it. 

Suddenly, the visits to Spencer's apartment increase exponentially. Sometimes, Spencer hears a knock at his door and opens it to find both Hotch and the old lady with her usual box of baked goods. Spencer thanks her, like he always does. He lets Hotch in, like he usually does. Hotch goes straight for Spencer's living room, but without Spencer pressed against him, like he never does. 

When Spencer returns from the kitchen with a glass of milk for himself and a glass of scotch for Hotch, Hotch has tacked up a map of the Greater DC area, complete with a box of colored pins and _that look_ on his face again. "Please."

Spencer hobbles over, and stares blindly at the wall. _What I want, I’m not going to get_. There’s suddenly a severe lack of oxygen in the room. 

Hotch is at his side instantly, easing Spencer slowly to the floor because all the chairs and couch space are covered in files and possible leads; Spencer slides to the floor on top of a copy of Detective Shaunessy’s letter and jerks back as if he’s been burned. "I swear I’ve been doing the best I can," he manages. 

Spencer can’t miss the fleeting disappointment on Hotch's face. "I’m not being fair to you," Hotch says quietly. 

Spencer's heart is pounding so hard it scares him. He’s felt this before, in that tiny cabin with the tombstones ready to go, on that dusty floor with the blast still echoing in his ears, in that ambulance unable to put his thoughts to words. "I can't do this." 

Hotch's grip on him tightens, and he runs a hand down Spencer's back, murmurs soothing things that hold back an undercurrent of worry and fear. "I know you're trying. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Spencer bites back a hysterical laugh, and thinks about his mother, about Elle, about Gideon. He’ll probably fail Hotch too, but at least he can try not to. "No, I mean I can't do _this_." He gestures between the two of them, Hotch with his arms still wrapped around Spencer, and Spencer, sitting against the base of the couch with his bad knee spread out across a map of the United States. "You need to focus on Haley. And Jack."

Hotch jerks back in surprise, scatters some of the eyewitness testimony across Spencer's living room. "Are you - ?"

"You shouldn't be worrying about me," Spencer says firmly. He hobbles to his feet, moving out of Hotch's slack arms easily. He guides Hotch towards his door at a speed his knee will later regret, gently pushes him out. "I’ll keep looking for a lead," Spencer promises. Hotch turns around, opens his mouth and Spencer knows he’ll protest. "I’ll be fine."

He always is. 

 

Karma, Hotch thinks, staring at another closed door. Karma for falling in love with a subordinate while married to his wife; karma for ruining her life even when he’s no longer in it. 

He isn’t sure if Reid understands - Reid, in some ways, is a lot like him, overly eager to absorb everyone else's problems. Hotch loves Haley, but differently now. He needs her to be safe, because she’s Jack’s mother, his ex-wife, someone innocent who never should have been involved. And then there’s that feeling, buried deep, deep down alongside the memories of Hotch's childhood. He loved Reid when he should have still loved Haley. The guilt, if something happens to her, will do him in.


End file.
